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@Greenbank
For the drop in positivity that's not surprising as the younger age groups had higher positivity rates, so if you stop testing lots of them (with lateral flow tests at school) then you'll stop finding lots of asymptomatic cases.
Even those 18+ who are starting to get vaccinated are still weeks/months away from the benchmark "two doses plus two weeks".
Two bits of anecdata:-
My daughter (11yo) tested positive on a lateral flow test as we were going to be seeing elderly relatives and we've been doing lateral flow tests prior to such visits. Upon informing her school year lots of other parents did lateral flow tests and 4 other asymptomatic cases were found (by lateral flow, so at the "infectious" end of the scale), a few days later one went on to develop symptoms. Without effectively random testing by us those 5 cases could have gone undetected for a few days more leading to reasonable transmission.
It was surprising (and mildly depressing) how few parents knew about the lateral flow tests, that they could be obtained for free from the gov.uk website or local pharmacies, etc.
So a large number of these cases are in people who don't even have access to the vaccines, and now a significant proportion of them (secondary school to 18) now have no regular testing (even if it is just lateral flow) over the summer holidays where they will be going around the country. I wonder just how many of them are going to get caught by the PCR testing required for travel (and/or return to the UK).
(Had our ONS tests 6 days ago, no call from T&T so I'd assume they're negative, I would have expected to hear by now if they had been positive. Good news is that I found that MiniGB can continue with the program and if she tests positive again [there is a good chance she will] within 90 days or the original test then she doesn't have to self isolate again - unless there are any symptoms obviously.
Ref: https://www.ons.gov.uk/surveys/informationforhouseholdsandindividuals/householdandindividualsurveys/covid19infectionsurveycis/howyourresultswillbeused#testing-positive-repeatedly-in-the-study
)